A big shout-out to T-Mobile product manager Des Smith who reminded me of an epic moment in T-Mobile history as today marks the fifth anniversary of the T-Mobile G1. Today actually marks five years since the device was announced and not released mind you so there’s another 5 year “anniversary” date we can celebrate in October.
We had been working for months and months with a small team in Building 44 in Mountain View, CA. We had seen about 9 different versions of the new “Homescreen” for Android and I still wasn’t completely certain we had seen the last one. I remember Fridays being “Donut Day” at the cafe there, and the arcade where I would spend my lunch with a bunch of Android coders playing old school video games – the team was bursting with excitement over what they were building and bringing to the world.
In a Google+ posting, Smith fondly remembers the excitement he felt the night before T-Mobile and Google announced the G1 to the world at a special event in New York City. It’s a fond memory for me as well as it remains of the best days TmoNews has ever seen in terms of traffic and engagement. There are a few other days that have surpassed that epic moment in Android history, but the G1 announcement was one of the moments I attribute to TmoNews moving into another level of tech blogging.
As Smith notes, today Android is everywhere, on our smartphones, wrists, refrigerators, cameras and eyewear. Tomorrow, Android may be power a new space shuttle or be the OS that powers your in-car navigation. The future for Android is bright, of that no-one can argue and sometimes its nice to sit back and think of where it all began.
